To restart a component separately, you can append its service name to the
restart command. For example, to restart only NGINX you would run:

sudo gitlab-ctl restart nginx

To check the status of GitLab services, run:

sudo gitlab-ctl status

Notice that all services say ok: run.

Sometimes, components time out during the restart and sometimes they get stuck.
In that case, you can use gitlab-ctl kill <service> to send the SIGKILL
signal to the service, for example sidekiq. After that, a restart should
perform fine.

Omnibus GitLab reconfigure

There may be times in the documentation where you will be asked to reconfigure
GitLab. Remember that this method applies only for the Omnibus packages.

Reconfigure Omnibus GitLab with:

sudo gitlab-ctl reconfigure

Reconfiguring GitLab should occur in the event that something in its
configuration (/etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb) has changed.

When you run this command, Chef, the underlying configuration management
application that powers Omnibus GitLab, will make sure that all directories,
permissions, services, etc., are in place and in the same shape that they were
initially shipped.

It will also restart GitLab components where needed, if any of their
configuration files have changed.

If you manually edit any files in /var/opt/gitlab that are managed by Chef,
running reconfigure will revert the changes AND restart the services that
depend on those files.